A Second Life for Your Museum: 3D Multi-User Virtual Environments and Museums

Richard Urban, Graduate School of Library and Information
Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Paul Marty, Florida
State University; and Michael Twidale, Graduate School of Library and
Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA

Abstract

The paper gives an overview of some of the museum-like
activities currently being undertaken in Second Life. Current development
is mainly in the hands of pioneers, often interested amateurs engaging
in serious leisure to create spaces enabling them to share their interests
with others. These efforts are explored in this paper through a systematic
analysis of museum visits and a qualitative analysis of interviews with
designers and developers of museums in Second Life. Findings identified
include the impact of the current technology on what is created, and
the importance of interaction-centric designs.

1. Introduction

Museums have been exploring the use of multi-user
virtual environments (MUVEs) for more than a decade, often in the form
of proprietary, non-persistent virtual worlds designed and developed
for select audiences such as teachers and students. Since launching in
2003, the on-line virtual community of Second Life (http://www.secondlife.com/)
has attracted over 900,000 dedicated ‘residents’ who are
laying the foundations for widespread adoption of MUVEs by museums, libraries,
archives, and other information organizations.

Already there is a range of museum-like activities
occurring in Second Life (SL).There
are many parallels with the early development of the Web, including how
resident-developed museum spaces currently outnumber those created by
real-life museums (see Taylor, 1995). These experiments in a new medium
can tell us a lot about what ‘real-life’ museums should consider,
as well as how we might want to inform and re-merge with our physical
resources. SL museums can be about historical re-enactment, such as dressing
up and walking around Ancient Rome with other residents acting in character – a
variant on real life (RL) re-enactments. There are SL museums containing
digitized RL artifacts. There are other collections of 'born digital'
artifacts created in SL that are collected, curated and preserved by
in-world museums. There are outdoor sculpture parks, places that are
more like art galleries, and venues to support Warhol-like art happenings.
There are labels, lectures, tours, audio guides, docents, even museum
shops. Some of the museums created in Second Life are now seeking affiliations
with real-life artists, or museums, and others are actively establishing
themselves as 501(c)3 non-profit organizations.

This paper presents a selection of the results from
our work that attempts to understand the nature, diversity and evolution
of current museum and museum-like activities in Second Life. Drawing
on the experience and lessons learned from past museum virtual environments,
non-museum collaborative spaces, and recent research on learning in multiplayer
on-line games, this research can serve as a guide for museums interested
in establishing a virtual presence in Second Life.

2. Literature Review: What is Second Life?

In many ways, the growth of MUVEs mirrors the growth
of the Web, as new functionalities and technologies transition from small
scale prototypes constructed by researchers at great expense to large
scale, rapidly growing mainstream products available to the general public.
These products are not only used by many people, but they are also co-created
by them. With the Web, this was a matter of using hypertext to create
Web sites, initially derived from various genres of print media, and
soon evolving their own genres. In the case of Second Life, users
can create 3D artifacts, buildings, and social spaces where people interact.
The social nature of Second Life is a critical component of understanding
what it is and how it can, and should, be used.

2.1 Between First Life and Second Life: MUDs, MOOs and VRML

While the scale of Second Life is unlike what has
come before, the idea of a persistent world that offers users the opportunity
for engagement and a role in creating the world with which they interact
is not new. In 1978, Roy Trubshaw and Richard Bartle, students at Essex
University, created the first multi-user dungeon (MUD) as a game that
allowed multiple players to engage in Dungeons & Dragons-like adventures.
In addition to being multi-player, MUDs were also persistent – when
a user logged off, the world did not go away; it continued to exist ready
for players to enter. MUD users often found the social aspects of MUDs
the most important aspect of their engagement, leading to more socially
oriented MUDs. In 1989, the MOO (MUD, Object Oriented) was developed
to allow participants to create and modify places within a MUD space,
enabling the development of various social and educational MOOs (Bartle
1999; Castronova, 2006).

While the development of 3D rendering technologies
such as Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) paralleled MOO development,
it lacked the capability to create multi-user environments (Durbridge,
2004). In the place of multi-user VMRL, companies such as Blaxxun
(http://www.blaxxun.com) and ActiveWorlds (http://www.activeworlds.com)
created persistent multi-user environments, worlds that offered many
of the affordances that social MOOs had offered, only in 3D. Limitations
of available bandwidth, lack of active development, and ultimately the
collapse of dot com funding prevented these early worlds from having
more than limited success. At the same time, graphic role playing games,
the successors to original text-based MUDs, were migrating on-line. RPGs
initially offered the ability to connect via local area networks, migrating
to full on-line-based networks in 1997 with the launch of Ultima Online.
Participation in massively multi-player on-line games (MMOGs) grew rapidly
as domestic access to broadband increased, and by mid-2006 exceeded 13
million subscriptions to various MMOG environments (Castranova, 2006;
http://www.mmogchart.com).

Although Second Life represents only a small percentage
of the total number of participants in MMOGs worldwide, it is the largest
and fastest growing of the new generation of persistent MUVEs. There
(http://www.there.com) offers similar features, but unlike Second Life
moderates user activities to allow only ‘PG-13’ content.
Linden Labs created TeenSecond Life
(http://teen.secondlife.com) that requires adults aged 18 and over to
complete a background check before they enter. Multiverse (http://www.multiverse.net)
is creating an open platform for the development of both MUVEs and MMOGs
through a common set of standards and clients. A consortium of academic
institutions is developing the Croquet project (http://www.opencroquet.org)
as an open-source environment for building collaborative virtual learning
environments. Lastly, the Acceleration Studies Foundation has established
a Metaverse Roadmap Project (http://www.metaverseroadmap.org) to forecast
and shape the development of the new 3D Web.

2.2 Museums and Collaborative Virtual Environments

In the early 1990s several MOOseums were constructed,
and museums were early adoptors of VRML for display of 3D artifacts (Corcoran,
2002; Fernandes, 1998). Museums also explored emerging 3D multi-user
environments such as Blaxxun and ActiveWorlds, although museums have
mainly favored custom developed non-persistent environments under their
control (Barbierie, 2001; Di Blas, 2005, 2006; Lucey-Roper, 2006). Many
of these virtual environments were developed with museum education and
K-12 students as their primary audiences, placing the emphasis on traditional
learning activities and pedagogy (e.g. Economou et al. 1999). These experiments
stressed the need for carefully structured and controlled activities
in order to make MUVEs successful as educational tools (Di Blas, 2003).
Museums have also been concerned about accurate representations of their
collections, sites or spaces in virtual worlds (Johnson, 2005; Tolva,
2005). However, a very different focus is needed if the goal of a MUVE
is social interaction and not authentic modeling of virtual artifacts
(Di Blas, 2003; 2005).

2.3 Second Life as a ‘Third Place’ for Serious Leisure

Second Life presents some challenges for the traditional
museum model of working with virtual environments. The residents in SL
(and TeenSecond Life, There, etc.)
are independent actors within the world. Like the real-world environment,
SL residents also have many choices for engagement, learning, and fun.
At present, little hard evidence is available about how residents spend
their time in-world (data we are accustomed to seeing in Web server logs
are still scarce in SL). Some thought is needed about how to evaluate
museum activities in SL.

Past evaluations of MUVEs have drawn from the literature
of computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) and studies
of on-line virtual learning. Recent research involving MMOGs
(Castranova, 2006; Dieterle & Clarke, 2006; Ducheneaut, 2005; Steinkuehler,
2004; Yee, 2006) suggest that such a clear separation between
work, learning and play may not always apply to multi-user
virtual environments in which participants invest a great
deal of ‘work’ in
return for tangible or pleasurable benefits. These studies
also suggest that instead of creating alienated individuals,
MMOGs create vibrant communities that can serve as ‘third places’ for
social interaction (Steinkuehler & Williams, 2006).

Fortunately, museums are not unfamiliar with adults
who engage in challenging tasks that provide them personal rewards. Volunteers
provide an important supplement to museum professional activities, even
though they are not officially employees or students of the museum; “Volunteers
are...involved participants rather than consumers” (Orr, 2006;
Stebbins, 1992). For them, the museum may often function as their ‘third
place’ where serious leisure pursuits can take place. If it is
possible to connect ‘third places’ and serious leisure activities
in both virtual worlds and museums, this might suggest a course of action
for the creation of virtual museum spaces that engage adults interested
in serious leisure. If museums can engage SL residents as individuals
interested in serious leisure with whom they can collaborate, rather
than treating them as consumers, museums may help establish new uses
for platforms such as SL.

Fig 1: The Second Life client interface, showing
a sample of primitive objects.

3. Methodology

Our research began by trying to create a list of all
museums or galleries currently available in Second Life. This delightfully
difficult task was made all the harder not only by the frequency with
which new museums are added to SL, but also by the number of real-life
museums or related organizations exploring the potential of SL by developing
private museums not open to the public. Eventually, we decided that the
best approach was to conduct a straightforward search, using SL's in-world
search engine, for all locations self-identifying as either a "museum" (43
locations) or a "gallery" (102 locations). By combining the
results of this search with on-line lists of favorite museums and galleries
in SL – some publicly available, such as in Wikipedia, and some
not, e.g. SL note cards passed around to residents in-world – we
produced a list of more than 150 museums.

We next visited each of these museums ‘in person’,
touring the entire installation as best as we could, and making notes
about the nature of the museum, the type of exhibits displayed, and the
special features available for visitors. Resources and descriptions about
these museums available on the open Internet were also consulted to round
out the available data for the researchers. Based on these observations,
and drawing upon existing approaches for describing virtual spaces (Castronova,
2006), we developed an extensive list of characteristics about museums
in SL, and then used a qualitative analysis process of coding and memoing
(Straus & Corbin, 1998) to create a conceptual framework for classifying
and characterizing SL museums (see below).

Based on this framework, we identified several exemplars
of museums in SL for further analysis and study (see below
for descriptions of these exemplars). Informal interviews
were conducted with selected developers of these museums using Second
Life Instant Messaging sessions. (Further details of our ongoing research
are available at http://www.isrl.uiuc.edu/~rjurban/.)

4. Characteristics of Museums in Second Life

This section presents nine characteristics that we
believe are helpful in discussing and comparing the variety of different
museums and museum-like places in Second Life. The characteristics are
illustrated by particular SL museums that are discussed in more detail
in section 5.

4.1 Scale

Museums in SL vary tremendously in terms of size and
scale, ranging from single installations to extended complexes
where exhibits are arranged over an entire island (such as
the International Spaceflight Museum). While the majority
of museums in SL maintain an RL metaphor by displaying artifacts on walls
or in cases in rooms, there is no explicit need to do so. In a world
where the sun always shines, there is no reason not to display artifacts
in the open air or even floating in mid-air. Since SL avatars are able
to fly, museums in SL can take innovative approaches to displaying artifacts
that maximize vertical space as well as horizontal. With
no need to worry about artifact theft or deterioration over
time, developers of museums in SL may choose to display their collections
in vast open spaces rather than forcing visitors to move from room to
room in a single building. Not only does this openness enable more visitors
to observe exhibits simultaneously, but it also cuts down dramatically
on the feelings of claustrophobia users often feel in MUVEs, especially
when moving around in small spaces.

4.2 Setting

Just as in RL, how a museum chooses to display its
collections matters tremendously in SL. Exhibits may be displayed in
one or two small buildings, one very large building, or in the open air,
and the setting where visitors encounter the museum’s exhibits
matters as much as the exhibits themselves. The developers of some SL
museums, such as the Second Louvre Museum, work very hard to create a
setting that duplicates, at least partially, an RL museum or location.
Such an approach, however, raises the question of whether the setting
is more important than the artifacts contained therein, or even whether
the setting itself is on display rather than the artifacts. So as not
to detract from the displayed collections, some museums, particularly
galleries of born digital art, present their exhibits on relatively blank
walls in relatively undecorated spaces. However, other museums seem inspired
by a 19th century exhibit mentality, displaying large walls covered with
a multitude of paintings as far as the eye can see.

Fig 2: WPA Poster Exhibition at Artsplace

4.3 Persistence and Evolution

While not uncommon to MUVEs, the fact that all locations
in SL are persistent can be challenging for first-time visitors to SL
museums. Individuals more used to playing computer games, where each
time they return to a game they can pick up where they left off, may
find it confusing to have a virtual world that persists and evolves even
when they are not present. When visitors return to a previously visited
museum in SL, they may find the museum completely different. Even visitors
accustomed to RL museums’ changing collections and rotating galleries
may be unnerved by the way virtual buildings can so easily change their
shape or size from one visit to the next. To address this, some SL museums
developers maintain a distinction between permanent and temporary galleries.

4.4 Media Richness

Even within an intensely graphic 3D environment such
as SL, there can be great differences between museums as to how they
employ multimedia and other media rich technologies. When interacting
in MUVEs, the fact that one is constantly working within an extremely
rich media environment leads visitors to consider that environment as
the norm, thus making examples of multimedia applications within the
multimedia environment stand out. For instance, visitors to the Sci-Fi
Museum can visit a “Star Trek Holodeck,” selecting from a
menu of possible objects and then entering the Holodeck to view the object
they ‘created’. Other examples of media richness in SL museums
include live video feeds from outside sources such as NASA TV shown in
the International Spaceflight Museum, live Flickr streams shown in SL
art galleries, and 3D representations of live weather data, courtesy
of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), displayed
in the Science Center on Info Island II. Given the nature of the available
technology, the concept of media richness takes on all new meanings for
on-line museum visitors and raises visitor expectations when visiting
museums in SL.

4.5 Visitor Engagement

Like museums in RL, successful museums in SL try to
encourage visitors to return again and again. Opportunities such as special
events, lecture series, group activities, and so on allow for community
building among visitors and encourage them to feel integral to the museum
itself. The International Spaceflight Museum, for instance, has a regular
lecture series covering topics ranging from the space shuttles to the
Mars missions. Presentations are extremely well-attended and well-publicized
in-world and in RL. Special events and similar activities can be powerful
tools for building a strong community of regular visitors who feel intimately
involved in the museum’s activities. It is important for developers
of museums in SL to find some way of drawing visitors into the museum
experience and building a community of the museum’s many virtual
visitors.

Fig 3: Blasting off at the International Spaceflight
Museum

4.6 Social Interaction

In order to take advantage of the multi-user aspects
of MUVEs, many SL museums offer visitors opportunities for social interaction,
providing areas to congregate such as cafes, places to exchange memorabilia
such as gift shops, settings for special events such as conference rooms,
etc. The mere fact that someone might visit a gift shop in an SL museum,
and purchase a t-shirt for their avatar to wear around a virtual world,
thereby advertising the fact that they visited a virtual museum, is a
good indicator of how strongly visitors value these opportunities for
social interaction. Visiting a museum in SL, interacting with other individuals
with similar interests (individuals who in RL may be located anywhere
in the world), and discussing the museum’s artifacts and collections
in real time can be a powerful incentive for encouraging museum visits.
When developing museums in MUVEs such as SL, it is important to provide
suitable opportunities for social interaction among visitors.

4.7 Intended Purpose

The majority of museums in SL fall on a continuum
somewhere between existing primarily to display artifacts (e.g. virtual
galleries such as the Bayside Beach Galleria) and existing primarily
to display a space or environment (e.g. replicas of historical settings
such as Paris 1900). For developers of SL museums, the museum’s
intended purpose influences numerous choices, such as the arrangement
of gallery space for tours and teaching purposes. Museums designed for
the explicit purpose of displaying a historical location face particular
challenges, as it can be difficult to recreate an entire location exactly,
given the technological limitations of building in SL.
Replicated environments such as Paris 1900 or Casablanca must therefore
focus on extracting key elements from the RL location and then re-positioning
them in SL to convey the look and feel of the original without necessarily
creating an exact copy. Recreated historical settings also face difficulties
if they wish to use non-player characters to add realism, and may enforce
certain rules (e.g. flying is not allowed in Paris 1900) to keep visitors
from performing in ways that violate the spirit of the exhibit.

Fig 4: Exhibit on Malay culture at the Fort Malaya
Museum

4.8 Collection Types

While everything in SL is digital by necessity, SL
museums display digital representations of many different types of objects,
from classic works of art to the latest scientific models, in both permanent
and temporary exhibits (there is even a History of Second Life Museum
in SL). Built-in multimedia technologies provide opportunities for displaying
unique types of collections that may be physically impossible to display
in RL museums. The International Spaceflight Museum, for example, offers
a solar system simulation where visitors can stand in the middle of a
model of the solar system, calibrate it to any date in history, and watch
the planets revolve around them. Museums in SL can offer unique experiences
that would be prohibitively expensive in RL museums, allowing visitors
to find out what it would be like to be caught in a tsunami (at NOAA’s
Meteroa Island), take a rocket ship ride into space (courtesy of the
International Spaceflight Museum), or parachute from the top of the Eiffel
Tower (in Paris 1900).

4.9 Target Audiences

Identifying and targeting specific audiences in SL
can be challenging. Not only is access to SL limited to people over the
age of eighteen (there is a teen version of Second Life, however), but
also the nature of interacting with individuals in SL, combined with
the typical SL citizens’ reluctance to give out information about
their RL identities, makes it very difficult for museum professionals
to administer surveys or conduct needs assessments in SL (and indeed
raises the question of whether one should collect data on visitors’ first
or second lives). Beyond counting the number of visitors who come through
the door and encouraging visitors to leave comments in a guestbook, there
is little at this point that museum professionals can do to learn more
about their visitors in SL. As more museums experiment with developing
exhibits and identity in SL, it will likely be necessary for museum professionals
to work with the developers of SL (Linden Labs) on improving mechanisms
for learning more about their target audiences.

5. Exemplars of Museums in Second Life

This section presents several exemplars of museums
in Second Life specifically chosen to illustrate the range of possibilities
inherent in the above conceptual framework. Selecting these museums for
discussion does not necessarily mean they are the best possible museums
in Second Life, but only that they are illustrative of the diversity
of content and experience that can be created.

5.1 International Spaceflight Museum (Spaceport Alpha 48, 78, 24)

The International Spaceflight Museum is an example
of a large-scale SL museum with many opportunities for social interaction.
The museum’s exhibits include a replica of the lunar landing module,
photo galleries, and a large ring circling the island on which a series
of rockets and other spaceflight vehicles are displayed. The rocket ring,
which is simply breath-taking in its scale and scope, is the centerpiece
of the museum; as visitors walk around the ring from rocket to rocket,
they have the opportunity to witness firsthand the evolution of space
exploration technology. In addition, there are numerous examples of rich
media and interactivity, including a solar system simulator, a planetarium,
and a rocket ride into space. At the end of the ride, visitors can teleport
from planet to planet to observe models of the various spacecraft that
visited each planet (including a special field trip to the surface of
Mars). The museum also offers a number of opportunities for social interaction,
including a large open-air auditorium for lectures and presentations,
small conference areas, and plenty of places for groups to gather and
discuss the museum’s exhibits. The combination of detailed exhibits,
elaborate multimedia displays, and frequent opportunities for interaction
has contributed to the museum’s success at building a community
of regular museum visitors.

Fig 5: International Spaceflight Museum

5.2 Second Louvre Museum (Tompson 153, 97, 100)

The Second Louvre Museum is an example of a traditional
museum installation displaying both classic and modern works of art in
a setting specifically designed to replicate a wing of the Louvre Museum
in Paris. The exterior of the museum is exquisitely detailed, with colonnades,
statues, fountains, and other features carefully designed and developed
to evoke the grandiloquence one feels when standing in front of the Louvre
in RL. Inside, the museum is divided into different galleries, and the
artifacts on display often cover the walls vertically as well as horizontally,
thereby requiring visitors to fly up to the ceiling to get a good look
at the works of art. While the historically accurate yet closed-in design
of the museum can make it hard to navigate in large groups, the structure
does a fabulous job of replicating the sense of visiting a grand European
art museum. Like many other museums in SL, the Second Louvre Museum does
not provide much, if any, descriptive information about the artifacts
on display. The museum seems to concentrate more on presenting works
in an evocative, artistic setting than on educating the visitors about
the artifacts and images on display.

Fig 6: The Second Louvre Museum

5.3 Sci-Fi Museum (Indigo 75, 213, 22)

The Sci-Fi Museum is an example of an interactive
museum using rich multimedia technologies as part of its displays. The
museum’s exhibits focus on science fiction in TV and movies, including
a sizeable collection of TV show posters and a movie theater that shows
a regular rotation of science fiction films. Floating above the museum
are replicas of the USS Defiant and a Klingon Bird of Prey (Star Trek
spaceships) which visitors can explore in detail by using a Star Trek-style
transporter that teleports them to and from the ships. One particularly
engaging exhibit is a multimedia simulation that allows visitors to select
from a number of preset displays (including such Sci-Fi staples as a
Star Wars Tie Fighter, a Dalek from Dr. Who, and H.G. Wells’ Time
Machine). The selection is then displayed in a room designed to look
like a Star Trek Holodeck. In a fascinating example of the problems that
can occur when working in MUVEs, the Holodeck simulator warns visitors, “Please
do not sit on the holographic exhibits or you will end up underground
when they dematerialize.” Museums in SL similar to the Sci-Fi Museum
include the Star Trek Museum, the Science Center, and the Computer History
Museum (which features a slightly aggressive and somewhat insistent robot
docent

The Bayside Beach Galleria Museum of Contemporary
Art is an example of a museum designed with an explicit focus on displaying
works of art in a neutral setting with few instances of media richness
or social interaction to get in the way of enjoying the art (one notable
exception being the museum’s location only a few steps away from
a nude beach). The museum comprises a series of interconnected rooms
where rotating collections of contemporary art are displayed on maintly
blank walls. Like many other art galleries in SL, the museum exists in
the middle of an extremely busy neighborhood, with plenty of excitement
to distract visitors after they leave the museum. The museum seems to
exist on the virtual equivalent of the Las Vegas Strip, and is surrounded
by, among other things, a castle, a windmill, and numerous rotating spotlights.
These issues illustrate the problem of building museums or galleries
on non-private land where developers cannot control what other people
build around them; designers who wish total control over their museums
will need to purchase their own, private island. Museums in SL similar
to the Bayside Beach Galleria include Artsplace, the Crescent Moon Museum,
and the Bolinas Museum of Art (which also exists in an extremely busy
and distracting neighborhood, surrounded by neon signs).

5.5 Paris 1900 (Paris 1900 9, 174, 16)

Paris 1900 is an example of a replica historical environment,
where the purpose of the museum is to display a particular setting and
to provide opportunities for social interaction within that setting.
To that end, there are a number of cafes, nightclubs (including a replica
Moulin Rouge complete with elephant and full service bar), and shops
selling fashionable clothing from wedding gowns to lingerie; Paris 1900
also features a small art gallery that puts on regular exhibits by SL
artists. While avoiding all anachronisms is impossible, the designers
of Paris 1900 work very hard to encourage their visitors to act in ways
appropriate to the historical setting. Flying is disabled, for
example, and visitors are encouraged to use an underground Metro station
when teleporting to and from the island. By contrast, as an example of
the innovative experiences available only in SL, visitors to Paris
1900 who climb to the top of the replica Eiffel Tower will find a box
of free parachutes, thereby enabling them to jump off the top of the
tower and parachute to the ground. Museums in SL similar to Paris 1900
include the Xibalba Maya Museum, Fort Malaya History Museum, Tudor Village,
and Casablanca.

6. Interviews

This section contains a few results derived from interviews
with owners and builders of Second Lifemuseums.
These residents were excited to share what they had learned from their
experiences in Second Life. Just as early Web sites set the tone
for subsequent efforts on-line, so also museums considering their own
projects will find that they have much to learn from these SL pioneers. Like
other on-line communities, SL residents take pride in their activities. They
strongly believe what they are engaged in is hard, creative work and not “just
playing a game.” For this reason SL residents have been wary
of being subjects for game studies research. However many of them are
likely visitors to our RL institutions and are interested in seeing museums
have a greater presence in .

6.1 Building Museums is Serious Leisure

With the exception of one participant, all of the
museum owners interviewed were doing so in the context of serious leisure. Some
found the prospect of creating virtual architecture compelling, while
others saw opportunities to share interests that they were passionate
about. Not only do these activities require a significant
investment of personal time, but they also often included real and ongoing
financial support (in some cases in excess of $US 200 per month for land
rent). Resident builders felt these costs were offset by the opportunity
to have positive social interactions with visitors, who also provided
donations of exhibits, collection objects, or Linden dollars to support
a museum’s existence. Smaller scale museums were often the
responsibility of a single owner/builder, while larger scale museums
were collaborations between well-organized groups where the costs and
responsibilities could be shared.

6.2 Second Life Isn’t the Real World

Most builders acknowledged that their activities are
still very much in the experimental stage. Many sites began by
emulating real world conventions simply because these metaphors felt
comfortable and intuitive. Most builders recognize that what is
intuitive in the real-world does not always translate into SL settings
and are tweaking as they go along. Many residents recommended thinking
carefully about the purpose behind the metaphors used in creating a setting
in order to select those that are appropriate for intended goals. In
some cases it is possible to literally turn convention on its head. For
example, if making an optical illusion work normally requires inverting
the image, in Second Life it can be much more engaging to invert the
avatar instead.

6.3 Interacting with Visitors

As noted above, there are limitations in the kinds
of information that is automatically logged, in contrast to the
more sophisticated Web analysis possible today. However, one of the major
attractions for SL museum builders was the ability to observe or interact
directly with visitors. One builder experienced in Web site development
noted that SL was different for exactly this reason and that an SL space
was more rewarding than looking at anonymous Web logs. This suggests
that visitor studies methods might be adapted to studying virtual museum
spaces in ways that we cannot study our Web sites. The development
of synchronous and social activities, such as lectures, collaborative
builds, and accepting feedback from visitors, is a hallmark of SL museums. As
one participant noted, “If you build it they will come once; if
they build it, they keep coming back.”

SL museum builders also noted the more interactive
nature of SL as a motivating factor of their work. Many hoped to
create more than a static space for visitors by including interactive
features (such as those mentioned in the descriptions of exemplars above). The
ability to develop sophisticated interaction is dependent on mastery
of the Linden Scripting Language (LSL) or the ability to acquire scripts
through purchase or donation.

6.4 Prim Economy

One of the largest challenges to builders are limitations
on the number of primitive objects (prims) allowed on a single
parcel of land (see http://secondlife.com/knowledgebase/
article.php?id=055). These
limitations force creative choices about how a simulation
is constructed or what types of labeling a museum offers (since label
cards can double a prim count for a museum of objects). Certain kinds
of objects, such as particle emitters and flexible prims, can also decrease
the performance of a simulation and introduce unwanted lag and jerkiness.

7. Conclusions

Second Life currently has many parallels with the
early days of the Web. It is an exciting place that participants are
co-creating while simultaneously trying to understand what it is, what
it might be, and what it is good for. It has many potential contexts
of use, but as in the early days of the Web, cultural heritage applications
are part of that pioneering exploration. The preliminary results of this
research do more than indicate the opportunities and challenges of using
Second Lifeas a platform for museums;
they suggest that it is equally important to understand how museums may
become collaborative partners in an already evolving community. Even
more so than the Web, SL is not just about providing information and
artifacts. It is about facilitating interaction. Because SL residents
have already decided that museum-like activities need to be an important
part of their second lives, a study of how they construct these activities
may provide museums with important clues about how they might engage
virtual audiences in ways that they have not been able to in the past.

Referenced Second Life Locations

The following Second Life URLs (SLurls) are provided
for the convenience of readers. With your Second Life client logged
in, these SLurls will take you directly to the listed locations.